10/01/1997  At SEMICON/West, PRI Automation announced it had added two additional buildings to its current facility at its corporate headquarters in Billerica, MA. The buildings, expected to be completed this month, were acquired for use as additional manufacturing space and to house a state-of-the-art demonstration and testing facility for the company`s 300 mm wafer handling solutions. The two buildings will bring PRI`s total space to more than 37,000 sq. ft., an increase of approximately 20 percent. Becau

10/01/1997  PRI Automation, Inc. has been awarded a second patent for its Virtual Cassette technology, the only system capable of transferring wafers from carrier to cluster tool without reorienting them, according to the company. Entitled "Straight Line Wafer Transfer System," the patent covers a version of PRI`s Virtual Cassette designed for cluster tools. Efficient batch wafer transfer capability provided by the Virtual Cassette is crucial for the use of Front Opening Unified Pods and open cassettes, bot

10/01/1997  PRI Automation (Billerica, MA) has received a multi-million dollar order from Japanese-owned Matsushita Semiconductor Corp. of America (MASCA) for its interfloor wafer transport systems. The systems -- wafer stockers, horizontal transfer mechanisms, and a reticle stocker -- will be installed by late 1997 in MASCA`s newest 200 mm wafer fab currently under construction in Puyallup, WA. The order is for Phase One of a multi-phase automation project for which MASCA asked bidders to map out an automa

10/01/1997  Through a joint partnership, the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) and Modis Training Technologies, Inc. (MTT), Mesa, AZ, have opened a 20,000 sq. ft. training facility in Newport, Wales, offering courseware to enhance the skills required for new wafer fabrication personnel to perform successfully in an ultra cleanroom environment. The WDA took the initiative in putting the center together in response to the need for a central training facility providing trained employees to the many semiconductor

10/01/1997  Lepco, Inc. (Houston, TX) has opened a permanent office in Manila to service the high technology industries located in the Pacific Rim. The move coincides with the company`s recent completion of several large-scale projects in the area. Lepco provides engineering, construction, testing, and support services for wafer fabs and cleanrooms, including complex mechanical systems, process support systems, tool move-in and fit-up. -- SES

10/01/1997  Santa Clara, CA -- Several new conference programs, an expanded exhibit floor, and a rousing keynote speaker are among the exciting highlights at CleanRooms West `97! From October 20-22, the Santa Clara Convention Center will be transformed into America`s largest contamination control event of the year.

09/01/1997  Implant Center`s new implant processing facility, which recently opened in San Jose, CA, will support high-volume, high-quality and fast-turn contract ion implant operations. The facility uses Class 1 minienvironment processing for 8-inch and beyond wafer fabrication. Class 1 is achieved through module isolation or SMIF micro-environment applications. -- KS

09/01/1997  Bob Mielke was the Institute`s technical vice president of the Contamination Control Division, completing a two-year term just ended on July 1. A senior metrology engineer for Abbot Laboratories, he`s been involved in the Institute`s standards and practices program since its inception in 1982. He was the chairman of Standards and Practices for the Contamination Control Division from 1987 to 1995 and is also the secretary for ISO TC209, the International Organization for Standardization`s Technic

09/01/1997  Steve Yellin is a senior member and immediate past president of the Institute of Environmental Sciences. He has previously served the Institute as fiscal vice president (1992) and as general chair of the 1992 Annual Technical Meeting. Yellin has had over 30 years` experience as a marketing specialist and 26 years as an industrial design consultant, during which he held various management positions on industrial, semiconductor, and biopharmaceutical projects. He currently is managing director of

09/01/1997  In the early days of cleanroom garments and laundries, prior to solid state electronics, the initial need for contamination control stemmed from the launching of the first manned rocket into space -- the Atlas space program, which raised concerns about sensitivity to contamination from hydrocarbon, which would ignite when combined with liquid oxygen, according to Dick Buechsenschuetz, vice president of Alltex Uniform Rental Service in Manchester, NH.

09/01/1997  As CleanRooms magazine celebrates its 10-year anniversary this month, it seems appropriate to take a look back. We`ve come a long way from roots first planted in September 1987, and we`ve witnessed some groundbreaking events in that time, too.

08/01/1997  As I write this column, the U.S. Air Force just released its statement about the 1947 alleged Roswell Incident. Much to my dismay, the Air Force didn`t really find EBEs -- extraterrestrial biological entities -- nope, it was a hot air balloon and a few car-crash-type dummies falling from the sky. If that doesn`t sound a bit far fetched, how about this?

08/01/1997  San Francisco -- Among the hundreds of new products rolled out at Semicon West last month, many had one thing in common -- they targeted the 300 mm semiconductor manufacturing market.

07/01/1997  To produce a quality weld, three parameters should be controlled -- impurity levels in the stainless steel, total welding time and welding gas quality.

07/01/1997  San Francisco, CA -- With the advent of 300 mm technology, semiconductor product suppliers are not sitting still. Semiconductor manufacturers are beginning to see a new series of products and joint ventures to help them make the transition to the 12-inch wafer.

07/01/1997  Ion Systems (Berkeley, CA) is more than doubling the size of its Singapore operations and relocating its regional office to a larger facility. The 103-sq.m. facility will include a repair and service center for local ionizer service and calibration. Ion Systems` customers in Southeast Asia include major disk drive companies such as IBM and Seagate, and TECH, a Singapore-based semiconductor manufacturing joint venture with Texas Instruments, the Singapore Economic Development Board, Canon, and He

07/01/1997  The world`s first 8-in. power semiconductor facility maintains a Class 1 environment aided by SMIF technology.

06/01/1997  Silicon Valley Group (San Jose, CA) is up and running at its new manufacturing facility in Ridgefield, CT. The facility, which includes 6,000 sq. ft. of Class 1,000 cleanroom space, will boost capacity of Silicon Valley Group`s production of its Microscan series of deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography systems. The facility will enable the company to increase its manufacturing capacity to five times the volume it produced in 1996. -- KS

06/01/1997  Silicon Valley Group`s lithography subsidiary is collaborating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration`s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center, Sematech and Tinsley Laboratories as part of a new program that will leverage government and semiconductor industry resources to advance reflective optics manufacturing for the semiconductor industry. The parties involved in the effort, which operates as the High Precision Optics Joint Sponsored Research Agreement, plan to develop the most ad

06/01/1997  Spectel announces the availability of the SEM Monitor, a diagnostic tool known as "Sharpness Analysis," integrated into a turnkey workstation to meet the semiconductor industry`s need for analysis of production metrology scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). The tool`s analysis capability was developed for use as an on-line instrument diagnostic and for tool-matching in a production environment. It provides a quantitative framework based on fourier transform feedback for monitoring SEM resolutio